Violin and Piano Adventure

Yesterday, Jean invited Eleanor over to our house to play. Well, not exactly our house. They went down to cycle at Bishan park, then played basketball. I think they started very early. When Jean came back to borrow my basketball, everyone in the house was still sleeping. And this is usually the best time to ask me to agree to anything. Jean chionged into my room and begged rather loudly for the ball, and I gave in within 2 seconds. I think they planned a festive season weight loss programme for themselves. A while later, the rest of the house woke up. Dad and I went to play squash, mom went to the gym. Only about 30 minutes into the game, I had to stop for a while to rest because I could feel the symptoms of thalasemia minor (cannot see properly, whole muscle gets very tense, feel like fainting). After a short break, I recuperated, and we continued our game. After that, dad and I went swimming. Mom met us for swimming a while later. My dad and I prefer sports like swimming to sports that require the head to be above the heart (tennis, squash, jogging, violin practice?) cus then there'll be enough blood flow to the head, won't feel the thalasemia minor. Btw, thalasemia minor, is a disease of the blood. It's genetic, passed down from my great grandmother, to grandfather, dad, me and jean. Once I was on a long bus ride and there was no seat, was sweating a lot of cold sweat all the way and jean was helping me panic.

After that, my parents and I went out. Jean and Eleanor went to watch a movie. We went to a violin maker's shop at river valley road. Went to try more violins. The guy laid out some violins and asked me to eliminate the ones I didn't like. I was left with 2 at the end. He later revealed good and bad news. I eleminated the cheaper ones. Well, the ones left were an 11k German and 12K french, 80 and 50-60 years old respectively. I liked those 2 equally. But then they don't come with the maker's certificates, and the extremely old one is anonymous. And the guy isn't going to touch up the violin if I do happen to buy it.

Then, we went to Yamaha at Thomson Plaza. These 2 weeks searching for piano, it has practically been like, yamaha kawai yamaha yamaha kawai yamaha kawai yamaha yamaha. It's really torturing for the brain, trying to listen for quality and worth. It's made worse when ur shopping for a violin at the same time. So many sounds to remember. We evenatually settled for a Yamaha U3 piano. Xiu lan ls (from church, also a piano tuner, so she shld have seen quite a lot of pianos, and worked in Yamaha) recommended it cus she says the inner parts are more refined, and after purchase service is better. She managed to get us to talk to her manager. That's also why my parents chose yamaha - cus she can help us get more value for the piano. It cost us 10k to get at least a decent piano which we all can agree to tolerate with for the next few years. Sigh.. So different from violin shopping. A 5k piano is like a 1k violin I think. So the exchange rate is about 10k piano = 2k violin.

Today, my parents and I went to play tennis at 7am. Jean was still lost in her dreamland. I don't know why I had the determination to wake up. In the afternoon, the same 3 of us went to look at violins at gramercy again. My teacher tried a Czech and Itlian violin asked me to go consider. The Czech one cost about the same as the piano. The Italian one was really superb. But the only problem was that it cost 23k, not quite a possible option. But I enjoyed playing it. It was quite nice and rich.

After that, went to Synwin cus it was just nearby. My original intention was to buy violin polish and cloth. But then my parents kept insisting that I try out Synwin's violins. I, on the other hand, was strongly objecting because my brain was not going to be able to hold on to more sounds. But then, objection overuled, I had to try about 5 more violins. They ranged from about 6-41k. The 41k was the best. But it's impossible. It's an Italian, made in 1967 (mom specially likes that year..), very even tone and it has that cutting edge, can penetrate. But that will be for me to dream about. The guy ( I think he's the synwin manager there cus he's the most smartly dressed) gave me a very long lecture on violins. My pea brain was like a bomb ticking and ready to explode. Information overload. My next best option was a 9.2k french/german i really cannot remember now. Made in 2007. Same as the gramercy Czech one. So we finally left Synwin, and I needed to recall wat the Czech souded like but my 1MB brain just couldnt remember anymore. So we had to go back to gramercy and I tested the upper E string for power. The one in Synwin declined in power on ascending on the E string. The Czech one sounded quite good to me, good penetration, edge, balance. So for now, I am settling for the Czech. Going to wait till ms kwok comes back to sg before confirming it. Now that the violin is more or less settled, there's still the bow to think about. Sigh...